The Total Perspective Vortex

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Strikes me that if you look at your own life on a microscopic level, it doesn’t mean anything. We’re just clusters of molecules, atoms, electromagnetic charges, quarks, gluons. What does this movement of charge in Newtonian space actually mean?

If you look on a macroscopic level, it makes even less sense: the stars we see in the sky are so vast, and so far away - but they’re only the nearest stars to us in a small galaxy alone. There are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, and our galaxy is one of billions. Look at the Hubble deep field and our galaxy itself becomes insignificant.

On our own planet, our existence is but a blip at the end of the evolutionary clock; geologically it doesn’t even qualify as a blip.

But even on the human level, what do you mean? Right now, you’re one of nearly 7 billion concurrent lives, most of them insignificant. In the grand scheme of things, unless you’re an Einstein, a Hitler or a Jesus, you don’t really matter. And historically, in a few thousand years even those three names will be completely forgotten, save as a footnote if humanity survives.

The only sphere in which your life possibly matters at all is the here and now, your friends and family, this brief few moments in the mindbogglingly vast sweep of space and time in the Universe. And in the scheme of things, they don’t matter either.

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Have a nice day!

2

Granted, within a hundred years of my death, my entire existence is going to be completely forgotten.

On the other hand, I’ll be dead, so it’s not like it’s going to matter to me.

3

There’s one simple two-step way to fame, fortune, and remembrance:[ol][]Do art.[]Die. [/ol]Your art will then become famous and change hands for fabulous sums. Your inheritors will fight over your estate, and it will be headline news in all the gossip pages. Because of this, respectable museums will scorn your art. Eventually, a new generation will break the mould (yet again) and dare to praise it publically. A generation after that, your art will adorn corporate hallways, and a generation after that, it will be the equivalent of elevator music. But by then the fortune will have been made, and you’ll be remembered as a paragraph or two in the art history books.

4

Is that fairy cake?

5

From this perspective, though, nothing is all that interesting. Everything in the universe (except dark matter, I guess) is made of atoms and charges and whatnot. I think, however, that you’re missing the forest for the trees. What makes people, and all life, interesting, is not what it’s made of, but how that stuff is arranged. And an arrangement of matter, part of, yet distinct, from its environment but that interacts with it in certain ways, is in my humble opinion, very interesting. It’s the arrangement of the matter in people, or for that matter in life itself, that matters.

The assumption here appears to be that size, either temporal or spatial, determines significance, but that is not necessarily true. Both viruses and hurricanes can kill millions, for example.

Now we’re getting closer to the matter, I think. The thing is that you have not really defined what it means to be meaningful, and the only things we are currently aware of that determines meaning is ourselves. And so, we get to arbitrarily determine what is meaningful. Who or what can possibly contradict us? If our molecules are not meaningful to us, so what? There is no rule that says that we have to consider the parts of meaningful things to be meaningful. Nor do we have to consider things that are far away meaningful, no matter how big they are.

Ascribing to the universe a characteristic that only belongs to a part of it strikes me as an error. Someone, I’m pretty sure it was Sagan, said that the universe doesn’t care about our wars and whatnot, and that’s true, but since the universe doesn’t and can’t care about anything, this observation is not all that profound. You say that no one in the future will likely remember any of us, and this is likely true, but they will have their own ways of generating meaning. It seems silly to impose your way, or anyone else’s, (to say nothing of the universe, which can’t) on them.

6

I don’t know why I responding to this part of your post but, Einstein = genius, Hitler = evil, Jesus = good. Everyone else = average…NOT! :smiley: Here’s your underlying assumption.

On a higher level, what do we mean?

7

[quote=“Sunspace, post:3, topic:569124”]

There’s one simple two-step way to fame, fortune, and remembrance:[ol][li]Do art.Die. [/ol]Your art will then become famous and change hands for fabulous sums. Your inheritors will fight over your estate, and it will be headline news in all the gossip pages. Because of this, respectable museums will scorn your art. Eventually, a new generation will break the mould (yet again) and dare to praise it publically. A generation after that, your art will adorn corporate hallways, and a generation after that, it will be the equivalent of elevator music. But by then the fortune will have been made, and you’ll be remembered as a paragraph or two in the art history books.[/li][/QUOTE]
Do what Buster did in *The Stupids *or what Bart did in The Simpsons.

8

Some music to go along with your Total Perspective Vortex.

9

If you look at it from the other end, it’s a little less bleak. All those tiny and seemingly insignificant (or massive and seemingly blunt) objects have conspired to bring about this bright moment, right now, in which we - a part of the universe - can see, think, act and savour.

10

Better than nothing.

11

“Why do people insist on creating things that will inevitably be destroyed? Why do people cling to life, knowing that they must someday die? …Knowing that none of it will have meant anything once they do?”

“It’s not the net worth of one’s life that’s important. It is the day to day concerns, the personal victories, and the celebration of life… and love”

Final Fantasy 6.

12

I can only be fully aware and certain of the power of my own feelings, so I choose to focus on having a fulfilling experience in my own time on Earth, rather than trying to ensure that I’ve made an impact on a cosmic scale.

There is a very small number of people to whom I am close enough to know that my actions affect them and to feel that doing right by them is extremely important. Occasionally some wider-scale issue touches me and I feel like I want to do whatever small thing I can.

Don’t care if this all will ‘matter’ in a hundred thousand years. It matters now, here, to me, to my dear friends and loved ones.

13

And this, friends, is why I don’t like to get drunk.

14

It took me forever to realize that’s british for a cupcake.

And yes, on a universal scale, maybe your life is meaningless. But you don’t live on a universal scale. You live on your scale. And your life has as much meaning as you put into it.

15

I think there is a different perspective for us little people. Its not what we are, but how we impact others that imparts value to our existence. All the above examples impacted people in such a huge way–positively or negatively–that they are famous (or infamous). I believe that my influence on the greater world and if you want to use the term–importance is a function on how I impact the people around me–even if they do not know me. Everything from how I lead people in my organization to being respectful and thankful to the waitress who delivers my meals at a restaurant. I’ve worked the drudgery of food service and know that sometimes on a bad day, just having someone treat me like a human is enough to get me through the day.

16

My life…right now…it’s pretty important to me.

17

Actually it’s not, we have cupcakes too and they’re different from fairy cakes which are small round sponge cakes with maybe something on top. But are not cupcakes. Also on a meaningful level, “cake or death?” Is probably the most important question on Earth, if not the Universe.

18

It’s my birthday, and I’m having an awesome one. My wife made waffles and bacon. My 11-month-old delighted me by crawling for the first time this morning. It’s 70 degrees out, and I’m going to go spend the rest of the day outside.

If you’re the slave over my shoulder whispering “Sic transit gloria mundi” during my triumphal entry, consider this your warning that you’re about to get a resounding Bronx cheer right in the hood ornament. Have a hankie ready.

And have a nice day!

19

Okay, they’re ‘cupcake like confections’ as opposed to ‘some odd kind of thing that I don’t know what it is at all and may be completely fictional.’ If ya dig.

20

Yep. Life is meaningless. Check.

Where most people descend into despair, however, is by making *that *mean something. Then things are bad or bleak or hopeless or some other negative thing. But they’ve missed the most important point: Life is meaningless, and that *itself *is meaningless. It’s not bad, or good, it just…is.

The cool part is that means you can give your life any meaning you want. Anything! And that’s a pretty powerful place to begin.